


you're lost in the wild

by aiineslin



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 22:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: the first few years of death were difficult.





	you're lost in the wild

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this almost immediately after watching coco in a matter of hours. i apologise for any errors beforehand! the title is taken from beirut - my wife, lost in the wild.

When he opens his eyes, he is dead.

He is a skeleton lying on the hard stone floor, watching the colourful lights of the Land of The Dead dance above him. This does not come as a surprise to him; his memories are sharp and he remembers how strange that damned chorizo had felt when it was going down his gullet. He remembers Ernesto’s shocked face, and he feels an ache so sharp it hurts when he thinks about his Imelda and Coco, far away in distant Santa Cecilia.

But there is an alebrije dancing around him, a multi-coloured, winged serpent with a beautiful rack of finely curved antlers and brilliant green eyes and the alebrije has latched its strong jaws around his purple shirtsleeves and is tugging at him insistently, so hard that Héctor feels himself being dragged a little ways on the ground. So he picks himself up, adjusts his shirtsleeves primly, and makes his way to the processing queue that the alebrije directs him towards, to join all the other newly dead souls on their entry into the Land of the Dead.

-

Héctor adapts quickly. There is a small pamphlet the public officials give out (and Héctor is forever amused by this, that even the _Land of the Dead_ has a governing body) and he reads it page to page in under twenty-three minutes, his skeleton finger sliding swiftly beneath the cramped black letters as he sounds them out into the air. His alebrije (he named her Esmerelda in a fit of inspiration, for the jade of her eyes and she rolls her eyes at this) is coiled loosely around his shoulders, snoozing and at peace with the world.

He closes the pamphlet, knuckles his fingers into the ground and he thinks. He has procured a guitar from one of the many charity shops that are set up at every corner, that give free clothes and gifts and other miscellaneous objects to the newly dead.

 _Find a place to live_ , the pamphlet suggests. _Work. Earn money. Rent a room, buy a house. Make a life in death (haha)._

He runs his finger across the strings of his guitar, letting her sing quietly. She is different from the one Imelda gifted him, but she is sturdy and in good shape. He tucks his pamphlet away into the small luggage he has laid by his side. His guitar case is set before him, its mouth yawning open. It is a busy street he sits at, and there are people who are lingering, their steps slowing down as they watch in interest to see what he will do next.

Death is much the same as life, Héctor thinks, and he lifts his hand, opens his mouth and sings.

-

He does what the pamphlet says. He rents a small apartment.  He decorates the apartment with small, tasteful trinkets that he  _thinks_ are of Imelda's taste. He tries to save his money. He drinks the occasional beer, goes to the occasional party, twirls the occasional woman around when he dances at those parties. Héctor makes friends, because he is charming and fast-mouthed and at the core, a good, warm-hearted soul. The year passes by quickly, and Héctor with his guitar becomes a fixture in the city’s music scene.

When Día de Muertos draws close, he and his newfound friends make plans to meet in the world of the living.

“Maybe we will meet in Santa Cecilia,” says Pedro. “And I will finally see with my own eyes how beautiful your wife is.”

“Maybe,” acknowledges Héctor, with a huge grin. “Ah, Pedro, I can’t wait to see how tall my Coco has grown!”

Pedro smiles, a little sadly. “I cannot wait to see my children too.” He thinks for a moment. “And my wife.”

Wisely, Héctor skirts the small, thorny matter of Pedro’s wife having remarried after his death.

-

“What do you mean, nobody put up a photo of me?”

“That is precisely what I mean, Mr Rivera. Nobody has put up a photo of you.”

“No, you must be mistaken. This is a joke.”

“Mr Rivera, please don’t do that.”

“Then let me through! I want to see my wife and daughter!”

“Security, security!”

-

“Esmerelda,” he whispers to his alebrije the day after Día de Muertos. He is in his small apartment, curled up in his soft bed and stinking of cheap alcohol. He strokes his alebrije on the head, small rhythmic motions which bring a nameless comfort to him. “Esmerelda, my beloved, my dear, tell me what is happening? I do not understand, Esmerelda.”

Esmerelda’s bright green eyes weep fat, translucent tears, but she does not answer.

-

Héctor leaves his apartment on the fourth day. His friends have called him, left letters and small gifts on his doorstep, and when he meets them again, he projects a façade of cheer and nonchalance. “It is her first year, after, you know – maybe she is busy. Maybe she is working hard, working long nights to provide for our daughter. My poor wife, I shouldn’t have left her to go on tour,” he says to his friends.

He almost believes what he says, he feels deep pain at his words. He imagines Imelda working deep into the night, Coco being rocked to sleep by her grandmother instead of her mama. (What work would she have picked up to provide for herself? Waitressing? Sewing? Laundry? He shies away from darker thoughts.)

His friends agree with his speculations, their eyes hold no pity yet.

-

The same scenario replays itself again at the custom gates.

He screams his throat hoarse at the departure agents, and in some far-off corner of his mind, Héctor is horrified at the disgusting way he is behaving.

Security takes him away to the administrative building which they reserve for troublesome people, and a clerk is assigned to deal with Héctor. The clerk makes a big show of looking over the multiple stacks of official-looking documents he has on his desk, pulls out a thin beige file and flips through it briskly before he snaps it shut. He looks over his gold-rimmed spectacles at Héctor, his expression grim.

“There is no photo, you understand?” The clerk speaks slowly and loudly to Héctor, enunciating every syllable with crisp clarity, as if Héctor was slow or deaf. “No-one put a photo up for you this year.”

“No,” insists Héctor, his voice shaking. “No. This cannot be. Look, I have a wife. I have a daughter.”

He slaps at his chest.

“I am still here,” he cries out, his voice breaking at the last word. The clerk understands what he means by that, and there is a certain tension in the line of his shoulders as he looks at Héctor.

“Maybe your wife,” the clerk suggests haltingly. “She could have remarried? Maybe her new husband does not let her put your photo up -”

“ _No_ ,” says Héctor and his voice is almost a wail by now, the high emotions of the night finally bearing their full weight down upon him. “Imelda will not remarry, she loves me, she will not remarry. Not one year. Not two years after I die, maybe five, maybe six, but not so soon, no -”

They put him in a jail cell, where he sleeps the night away sobbing into the collar of his shirt.

-

When he is released from jail, there are no gifts at his doorstep. There is one letter slid under the door, written in a crisp, strong hand. It is written by Pedro.

His wife, says Pedro, is well. Coco is a strong and active child. Imelda makes shoes for a living. She has set up an ofrenda this year, but Héctor’s photo does not grace it. How does he know all this? Why, it is because his wife’s new husband has moved his family to Santa Cecilia, and Pedro, remembering his poor friend Héctor, had tried to locate Imelda during his short time in the land of the living.

He reads and re-reads the letter over and over again, until the words are burnt into his mind and when he is done reading, Héctor folds the letter neatly into half and returns it to its envelope. He sits at his table, stares at the wall, and he does not cry, because he has cried enough in the jail cell for a hundred men and more.

-

The next few years are difficult. He tries, again and again, to cross the customs. The security officers, departure agents and administrative people become familiar with him. Pedro keeps him in the loop of Imelda and Coco’s lives as well as he can, and Héctor is grateful for that gift, that Pedro even bothers to leave his family for a few moments to locate another man’s family. Despite this, he feels his bond with Pedro becoming strained and awkward; Héctor knows that his general demeanour has deteriorated badly over the past few years, and he does not blame his once-good friend for becoming distant.

In fact, he is growing distant with all his friends. He downgrades from an apartment to a room when his income slows down, because his moods are too low to perform well. He rarely practices, and when he does, his practice barely hits thirty minutes before he puts his guitar down.

Esmerelda tries to cheer him up. She guides him to small, intimate bars where the music is good and strong, she takes him to the spirit forests which border the enormous city, shimmering, ghostly-green landscapes which stretch into the distance as far as the eye can see. She steers him clear of the schools and playgrounds, places where little children gather and laugh and play. She tries to sing him to sleep, soft rasping hisses that make him laugh weakly and clasp her to his chest because she is trying very hard, and it hurts him to see her trying.

And then Pedro writes him a letter in which he tells Héctor, I am sorry. My wife has moved to another city.

-

Héctor darkens his lips with red, draws new cheekbones inexpertly with powder and brush. He styles his hair terribly.

The departure agent (Gloria Lopez, he knows her name by now) takes one look at him, shakes her head and says, “Héctor, no.”

“I’m not Héctor,” he snaps. “I’m Frida Kahlo. My photo is on _every_ ofrenda.”

She immediately hits the panic button and security arrives, and Héctor leaves cursing the fact he took the line with the most trigger-happy departure agent.

-

He has no friends now.

His busking does not pay for his room, because he barely busks anymore. So the landlady kicks him out. He is not surprised.

He moves to the city slums, the lower quarters, into a small shack with tin and wooden walls where one room was living room, dining room and bedroom all at once. He brings nothing but a small luggage bag with him, and even that was more than what some people brought with them on their first day in the slums. 

He is greeted, warmly enough, by the citizens of the slums. He receives a slight shock when a smiling boy with soft brown hair calls him uncle.

“That’s the way we do things here,” says an old woman who wears spectacles patched together with sticky tape. “We have no family to remember us, so.” She shrugs her shoulder, smiles. “We make a family here.”

Héctor nods. He thinks he understands.

-

It is a bad year, his first year in the slums.

Héctor drinks a lot. During one of his drinking sessions, he commits the worst mistake of his death. Esmerelda is with him, as always. She is curled in a small pile on the small television he has salvaged from the dump. It did not work after the first few times, and it has become her favourite sleeping spot.

He is drunk, and the sight of her peace arouses a rage of inexplicable and enormous intensity within him. Héctor rises to his feet. Esmerelda’s eyes fly open, and her head rises to follow Héctor’s weaving, drunken walk to his luggage case which is shoved in the corner, where he manages to fumble open with many slips and furious curses. He takes out a small, yellowed pamphlet and turns around to face her, his eyes bloodshot with anger and drunkenness.

“What use are you,” Héctor screams and he throws the ragged pamphlet he received from the public officials so long ago at Esmerelda, causing her to dodge, hissing alarmedly. “If you cannot take me across the bridge? What use are you? You are no guide, you are useless, you stupid, _stupid_ –”

Esmerelda does not wait for him to complete his sentence, she draws herself to her full height, hisses like a steam engine, flares her wings and shoots straight out of the open window.

Héctor waits for her to return.

She does not.

-

He does not try to cross the bridge that year.

-

By his second year in the slums, Héctor has amassed a small arsenal of cosmetics. He has learnt from the women and some men in the slums how to apply make-up to his face, how to create an illusion with powders and small brushes. He rekindles old contacts from his previous life (hah!), reaches out to certain people in the theatrical industry and gain some access to their dressing rooms with sweet words and traded favours. He makes friends with the slum folk, learn their names and stories, weep and celebrate with them.

(Every night, he walks the streets with Esmerelda’s favourite treats in his hands, calling out to her. She does not reply.)

In the hours before Día de Muertos, he sits before a small cracked mirror and lifts the make-up brush to his face _._

A skeleton with tired eyes look back at him.

He has not drank for a little less than a year, since the day Esmerelda left him.

Gritting his teeth, Héctor begins to draw.

-

It does not matter that the departure agent recognises him. He manages to run past her and through the gates and on to the bridge, that is more than he has ever done so far.

It does not matter that the bridge collapses under every step he takes, causing him to sink deeper and deeper into the orange-yellow petals, causing him to choke and gasp despite not needing to breathe for many years.

Perhaps if he runs fast enough next year, he thinks as he is hauled away by the same security officers he meets every year (“Hi Fernando, hi Javier.”), he will make it past the barrier and into the land of the living.


End file.
